Wednesday, October 14, 2009

My Blog Action Day Post: Climate Change and Poverty

Even though tomorrow, October 15th, is Blog Action Day, an annual event when bloggers write about the same issue on the same day, today is the best day for me to put up my post, so here it goes! I figure it's already October 15th in some parts of the world, so it's ok (:

This year's Blog Action Day issue is climate change. Personally, I'm interested in the connection between climate change and poverty.

"A study, published in an August issue of Environmental Research Letters, has shown that climate change will have a disproportionate impact on the world’s poor, pushing them further into poverty. The study examined the potential economic impact of adverse climate events, such as heat waves, drought and heavy rains on households in developing countries."

Oxfam America wants supporters to send an email to President Obama asking him to, "make the US a leader [during the United Nations Climate Change Conference] in crafting an equitable global treaty that provides substantial financing for poor and vulnerable communities to adapt to climate change." Oxfam UK is asking its supporters to send similar emails to Prime Minister Gordon Brown.

The Asian Cities Climate Change Resilience Network, "aims to catalyze attention, funding, and action on building climate change resilience for poor and vulnerable people by creating robust models and methodologies for assessing and addressing risk through active engagement and analysis of various cities."

What other projects and innovations have you heard about that are being developed to help poor people who will be, and are affected by climate change?

6 comments:

We were just hit by two very strong storms two weeks ago. we never had that in decades. They left our country with still so many flooded areas, a lot were homeless and lost so many loved ones. The effect of those twin storm were devastating. And the news says its all because of global warming.chinese translator

Once the deep mystery of “climate change” has been solvedAnd “What’s green and causes CC?” is no longer a popular riddle,The legacy of the era most likely will be:“Never in recorded history have so many made so much over so little”.(With apologies to the late, great Winston Churchill).

I'll tell you one temperature that is rising for sure ~ mine after reading the third comment... Kudos to you for posting it even though the sentiment of the commentor was quite offensive. Perhaps if he had made the comment on a blog post that was "just" about climate change and the differing opinions on that topic, it would be a more acceptable statement of opinion. Given that your post tied in to the uncontrovertable reality of poverty, I found the comments quite upsetting, "so much over so little..." The issue of poverty in this world is probably the biggest issue over which more should be made! Whew... glad I got that out!

So, all that said, just wanted to tell you that one of my posts about Blog Action Day was about poverty, too, referencing CARE as well. In fact, ironically, I end that post with a comment much like the one I just made above...doing whatever we can to address global poverty is something we all as human beings should be able to embrace and attack together...

AND, as if that isn't coincidence enough, I also blogged about the importance of WOMEN in the equation that will be the solution, your topic I just realized for 10/16...

I posted about the women topic on Big Green Purse, too, and wonder whether you know Diane Mac... Somehow, I won't be surprised if you do as you are both changemakers.

Amy-It's true, big changes need to be made to turn the tide on global warming, but lots of small actions can add up to big change.

Edwin Sanchez-hmmm. I suppose looking back, large problems can seem smaller in retrospect, but for now, I think global warming is a pretty huge problem that won't be regarded as "little" any time soon.

Amy -Thanks for sharing your feelings and your blog post (: Yes, I do know Diane's blog and website. We met in person a couple years ago at a BlogHer Conference.